News from August 2011

If you’ve ever thought, “One day, I’m going to put in a solar energy system,” today might be the day. Economic issues across the nation are contributing to the early demise of solar incentives such as tax breaks, grants and rebates. “We’ve been thinking about this for several years,” said California homeowner Jim Adams. “The […]

China’s omnivorous global appetite for energy resources is well known. While biofuel production is one of the rising energy stars of the 21st century, it is unlikely to become a significant source for China in the near future, as the country’s arable land is devoted first and foremost to feeding the country’s massive population 1.3 […]

KUNSTLER, HEINBERG TALK PEAK OIL, SUBURBIA, THE END OF GROWTH Noted Author/Commentators Exchange Ideas on Podcast – Transcript Available TROY, NY (08/29/2011) — James Howard Kunstler and Richard Heinberg are two of the most popular authors on peak oil and the coming age of resource scarcity. On the latest “KunstlerCast” podcast, the two author/commentators engaged […]

Summary: One of the saddest aspects of the Internet is that it so often fails to make us smarter. In a mutant version of Gresham’s Law, loud amateurs too-often drown out the voices of experts. Here we an excerpt from a 1975 book that tells us more about Peak Oil than a typical dozen posts […]

U.S. Sen. Richard Lugar touched on topics from disarmament with the former Soviet Union to the need to increase food production for a growing world population Tuesday during a luncheon at Harre Union on the Valparaiso University campus. About 200 business, community and education leaders attended the event, which was sponsored by the Greater Valparaiso […]

The world’s biggest oil companies put in a pretty pathetic performance in the second quarter of 2011. Not in terms of earnings — those were great, with Exxon posting $10.7 billion and Royal Dutch Shell doing $8 billion. Just what you’d expect with Brent crude at a lofty $120 a barrel. Where the results were […]

These days, jobs trump environmental concerns. Given the current high unemployment, it’s not looking good for environmentalists after last week’s decision by the U.S. State Department to green-light the Keystone XL pipeline from Alberta’s oil fields to the Texas refineries. Because these days, potential jobs trump greenhouse gases. Also, Canadian energy security trumps environmental risks. […]

Hydraulic fracturing, also known as “fracking,” for the purpose of extracting natural gas from the earth involves flooding it with millions of gallons of chemical-laden water, a practice that by all estimates is damaging the environment to some extent. But a US Energy Department (ED) advisory panel, which happens to be padded with members connected […]

James Hansen, head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, was arrested outside the White House as he joined protesters in urging President Barack Obama to reject TransCanada Corp. (TRP)’s $7 billion pipeline. Before he was taken into custody today, Hansen took a megaphone and implored Obama to act “for the sake of your children […]

Full Story: http://blog.alexanderhiggins.com/2011/08/21/ny-times-large-areas-japan-declar… In a deceitful article, the NY Times has announced that Japan is expected officially declare a large area of Japan surrounding Fukushima indefinitely uninhabitable, perhaps for decades. The Times article however misleads the reader on several points, including implying that harmful levels of radiation have only been found within the 12 mile […]

If 2008 was the Year of the Shales, 2011 is shaping up to be the Year of Liquids-Rich Plays–and there are still four months to go. A major recurring theme in second-quarter conference calls was oil companies’ news of positions amassed or initial test wells drilled in new shale and unconventional fields containing oil and […]

Here’s a stomach-curdling thought: by 2050, the global population is expected to reach nine billion and, in order to feed all these people, we’ll have to increase the world’s food production by 70 percent. Unfortunately, however, there’s a huge amount of inefficiency all along the global food chain — in industrialized nations, where 670 million […]

Food agency says new strain of H5N1 avian flu is spreading in Asia and may breach defences of existing vaccines. The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has warned of a possible resurgence of the deadly bird flu virus, saying that a mutant strain is spreading in Asia. A mutant strain of the H5N1 avian […]

Some factories burn peanut shells to run plants as natural gas is rationed. For the past several winters, Argentina’s government has rationed natural gas to manufacturers of cooking oil, auto-parts, and cement in the north of the country. The measure is meant to keep gas flowing to households during particularly cold stretches of the winter. […]

Many of the world’s biggest energy companies may have to surrender most of the gas from Iraq’s vast southern oilfields to a processing and export project led by Shell, a final draft contract between Baghdad and Europe’s biggest company, obtained by Reuters, shows. Oil giants including Royal Dutch Shell (RDSa.L), BP (BP.L), U.S.-based Exxon (XOM.N), […]

With the US economy stuck in the doldrums, weakening the demand for oil and its products, and with the fall of at least portions of Tripoli foreshadowing the eventual return of Libyan oil exports to the market, it must seem puzzling that US gasoline prices haven’t dropped farther in the last few weeks. As of […]

When it comes to building trust and community support, CEO of Texas-based Breitling Oil & Gas company Chris Faulkner, says the hydraulic fracturing community has failed miserably. Faulkner founded Breitling in 2004 as a natural gas and oil company that exclusively taps North American shales and wells. He told AOL Energy that although there has […]

The September issue of the American Journal of Public Health is now available online featuring 8 studies and articles by an interdisciplinary set of experts, each examining the health risks posed by peak petroleum and what can be done to mitigate and protect against the onset of a major spike in energy prices. The special […]

It is important to recognize inaccurate stereotypes about the simple life because they make it seem impractical and ill suited for responding to increasingly critical breakdowns in world systems. Four misconceptions about the simple life are so common they deserve special attention. These are equating simplicity with: poverty, moving back to the land, living without […]

Theoretically, we have a very large amount of resources of many kinds available–oil, natural gas, coal, uranium, gold, fresh water. There is a relatively small amount of high quality, inexpensive-to-extract resources, and we tend to extract those first. From there, we move to lower and lower quality resources that are more expensive to extract. The […]

The first test-tube hamburger is only a year away and it is being developed in the Netherlands. Meat produced in a laboratory is being hailed as a possible solution to global food shortages. But what are its chances of catching on with consumers? The world population is rocketing and, with it, the demand for meat. […]

Don’t you stumble, sometimes, into something that seems to make a lot of sense but you can’t say exactly why? For a long time, I had in mind the idea that when things start going bad, they tend to go bad fast. We might call this tendency the “Seneca effect” or the “Seneca cliff,” from […]

Richard Douthwaite explains how and why the energy supply and peak oil determine what happens with the economy, unemployment, recession and depression. Douthwaite presented this exclusive talk to Local Future’s 2011 conference: The International Conference on the Sustainability: Energy, Economy, Environment. The conference was organized and directed by Aaron Wissner, president and founder of Local […]

In the 6th century B.C. Athenians gave extraordinary powers to one man to make needed reforms that would deliver Athens from economic stagnation and the gradual enslavement of the lower classes. That man, Solon, is believed to have forced the forgiveness of debts, forbade the pledging of oneself or one’s family members as security for […]

The original Prudhoe is a small village, with a medieval castle, on the south bank of the Tyne, in the north-east of England. It lies in a coal-mining region where, within 5 miles of Prudhoe Colliery there were, over time, an additional 157 mines and pits and it was working five seams of coal in […]

More than 4 million homes and businesses were without power Sunday morning as Hurricane Irene continued to roar up the East Coast and took aim at the New York City area and New England. Winds of up to 115 miles per hour whipped across the Eastern Seaboard, ripping power lines from poles and snapping trees […]

Canada is now largest US oil supplier, but activists fear the heavy environmental costs of tar sands crude. David Daniel had never been to an environmental protest before this week, but as hundreds converge in Washington for civil disobedience against a massive oil pipeline, the retired carpenter from Texas is spearheading opposition against what he […]